De prodigiosa specie, naturaq[ue] cometae, qui nobis effulsit altior lunae sedibus, insolita prorsus figura, ac magnitudine, anno 1577 plus septimanis 10. apodeixis tum physica tum mathematica

I am entirely ignorant of the direction to which this whole Chasm A term used here for atmospheric light phenomena pertains, and I do not deny that many of these things may be traced to physical causes. Yet, no one will easily persuade a more experienced man that such an order of economy, variety of forms, and certain appearance were shown to us by chance in such a thing, nor again has any part of it achieved anything up to this day that would respond to its dignity. Although many very foolish people, on the very day it appeared, twisted it toward the expedition in Zeeland The Dutch Revolt against Spain, since God threatens before He strikes, and usually constitutes a wide interval of time between the sign and the things signified, as we have demonstrated more broadly in our Cosmocritica Studies on World Judgment/Astrological World-View. Whether God wished for the traces of a now imminent war to be expressed so many months beforehand, the analogy of the events themselves will shine more clearly. For although in my judgment no method or reason for judging future events is more certain than from divine characterizations Meaning prophetic signs or markings, especially as often as they are carried in certain orders, and when the consensus of physical things is invoked as part of the argument for the symbols of the figure: yet I think it a task worthy of a philosopher (especially a Christian) to leave the prediction which is about individuals, and which is likewise defined by the modes of places and times, to the dispensing providence of things, and being content with a general notion (the only end for which prodigies are contained), to submit the intellect for the rest to the will of the Divine, mindful of that oracle, that it is not for us to know the times or the seasons. This was also observed long ago by those holy men and our ancestors before the destruction of the city of Jerusalem under King Antiochus. For they did not immediately apply an interpretation to phantasms seen in the air, but struck as if by certain signs of divine wrath, they prayed to God that He might either mitigate the onset of His fury, or (which is often His supreme kindness) turn it away against the enemies of His name.

On the common characterization and meaning of Chasms.

The generation of these is mixed from physical and metaphysical causes.